


Five moments in the life of Augustus Mayerling

by sevenofspade



Category: Benjamin January Mysteries - Barbara Hambly
Genre: Backstory, Gen, Yuletide Treat
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-12-23
Updated: 2014-12-23
Packaged: 2018-03-03 01:52:25
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,176
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2833823
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sevenofspade/pseuds/sevenofspade
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Becoming Augustus Mayerling is a process.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Five moments in the life of Augustus Mayerling

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Brigdh](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Brigdh/gifts).



> I was inspired by the "anything to do with the really early days" part of your Mayerling prompt. I hope you like it!

Sophia keeps her last name of Mayerling when she enlists in the Prussian army, but takes Lübeck's first name -- famous, infamous, the woman corporal August Lübeck -- for luck she tells herself, in case Augustus is ever seen through.

There is no medical to speak of. They look at her teeth, ask about the pock marks on her face and send her on her way. 

The shirt of her uniform is far too big for her and the breasts she has no need to bind and yet it settles over her skin and _fits_ her like nothing ever has before, not even her own skin. The trousers, on the other hand, are far too short and show her ankles to the world.

One of the boys who enlisted alongside her comes over, holding his trousers up with one hand. He's younger than she is as a girl, but older than she appears to be as a boy.

He introduces himself as Wilhelm.

She blinks at him.

He finally prompts her for her name when the silence grows heavy.

"Augustus," she says.

He nods, then gestures with the hand holding up his trousers and offers to trade.

He's shorter than she is, she realises. She nods and he gives her his trousers instantly. She takes off hers, her shirt falling to mid-thighs, hands it to him and pulls her new trousers back on.

They're a bit long and too wide in the hips, but it's nothing a bit of thread won't fix.

* * *

Sophia leaves the army a handful of years after Napoleon is finally defeated. Part of her was waiting to him to come back again, the way he had in 1815, whipping the French back into a frenzy from nowhere, but now the man is dead, at long last and in exile. Part of her was wondering what to do with herself now that the war is over.

She bounces from regiment to regiment, fighting skirmishes and peasant revolts -- if they can be call that, when there are, at most, a dozen peasants. She was a peasant once herself.

She is a conscript and there is no need for conscripts in times of peace.

When Wilhelm dies in Brandenburg while she is away in Silesia and she is, absurdly enough, the one they notify even though she hasn't spoken to or thought of him in months, she decides she has enough. There is nothing keeping her in the army.

There never has been.

She has her sword and its scabbard, a man's shirt, a man's trousers -- made for giants and shortened at the leg with a bit of thread -- and a man's swagger when she walks.

She is ready for the world, Sophia thinks.

* * *

France was boring, in the end.

Augustus had come to Paris because Napoleon had been French and she'd already spent enough time getting drunk and fighting scoundrels in Prussia, Austria, Bavaria -- anywhere between the Rhine and the Danube, really.

But in France, they had told her Napoleon had been Corsican and if Augustus was going cross the water, it would not be to go to Corsica, of all places. At least in Florence they knew how to handle a sword, even if they thought adding a knife into the mix was fair play.

Besides Napoleon, France had had La Maupin, something like two centuries ago. In the tavern in Marseilles, they still talked about her winning all the swordfights and seducing all the women.

And Augustus thinks _Yes. I want that_. La Maupin as a woman had done all Augustus had done as a man and more; Augustus has won far more than her share of swordfights, but she has never taken a woman to bed.

Perhaps she would change that, in the New World the ship leaving tomorrow from the Marseilles harbour would carry her to it.

But perhaps she will not do it as La Maupin did, she thinks, picking at the tread of her cuff. She has been Augustus too long to go back to being Sophia, even were she naked with a woman's hands on her body.

She has never been interested in men, she knows this now. Is that perhaps why she has taken to role of soldier and fencing master with such gusto?

Perhaps. Perhaps not.

Perhaps she simply likes women because it is the role that is expected of her, as soldier, as fencing master, as a man.

Perhaps she's never felt more real than when they call her "Mister" or "Monsieur" or "Herr Mayerling". She had thought, once, that she would be reminded of her father or her brothers, but no. The name -- more than just the name, in truth -- fits her like a sword in her hand, like she was born to it.

Perhaps it matters not.

The world is bigger than Prussia and despite what France might think, the world is bigger than France, too.

* * *

Augustus meets the Irishman entirely by accident. He is drunk and singing and for a moment, Augustus thinks the boat never quite reached this outskirt of Hell that calls itself New Orleans and left her in Dublin instead, but then the ruffians speak with that characteristic bourgeois Créole accent and when she routes them, their blood is red against skin paler than her own.

The Irishman is hurt.

Augustus picks him up, cursing herself for paying less attention to her surroundings than to her memories of the graceful sweep of Madame Trepagier's neck. Madame Trepagier is by far the most beautiful woman Augustus has met today or seen in years, or indeed ever. There had been a fire inside her, sitting at her piano, that had shone almost through her skin, for all that she is unhappy in her marriage. It's a fire Augustus suspects looks much like the one in her own eyes, when she has her sword in her hand.

She'd found the sword to escape death and had stayed because she'd found her life laying there.

Somehow, through the fever and the fevered babbling, the Irish nobleman who wears the name of Rome's worst enemy sees right through Augustus to the girl she had been on that fateful day in Prussia so long ago, half a life and half a world ago and hasn't been since -- perhaps never really was.

Lübeck's luck must be with her still, after all these years, because the man keeps her secret.

As she keeps his.

A name like 'Augustus' is as real as a name like 'Hannibal' and it is certainly real enough for New Orleans, this sweltering city on the side of the ocean they've both had to cross to become who they were always meant to be.

* * *

Augustus marries Madeleine with the Irishman in attendance and when the churchman pronounces them "man and wife", Augustus rejoices of being Augustus Mayerling.

Perhaps La Maupin is laughing, wherever she is, but she can go seduce Lübeck for all Augustus cares.

Augustus is a man, Madeleine is his wife, he is her husband and he is happy as he is.

**Author's Note:**

> [August Lübeck](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Friederike_Kr%C3%BCger)   
>  [La Maupin](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Julie_d%27Aubigny)


End file.
